Not that the leader hogged all the prizes: David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, picked up ‘Best Scot at Westminster’ for delivering the latest Scotland Act and maintaining good relations with the Scottish Government.

Of the ten awards available only one went to an SNP figure – congratulations to Fergus Ewing, the rural economy secretary, on his ‘Politics in Business’ award.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives has attacked politicians who accuse opponents of more devolution of being ‘anti-Wales’, according to Wales Online.

In a private speech to party officials, Andrew RT Davies criticised the notion that there was any contradiction between being Welsh and British, and urged unionists to be more pro-active in championing Britain: “For unionists of any political colour, it can be all too easy on occasions to retreat, shy away, and cow to the nationalist tune when singing the virtues of our great Union.”

Davies continued:

“And as proud unionists we have a duty to stand up to this weakness that threatens the United Kingdom, to fight against the subtle, dog-whistle politics Plaid Cymru seek to instigate when we attempt to promote the mutual benefits of the Union… Plaid’s ultimate aim – what they live and breathe for – is an independent Wales – a politics engineered to divide our great nation.”

It’s certainly heartening to start seeing the re-emergence of a more muscular unionism to meet the challenges of the Brexit vote. Perhaps Davies is taking his cue from the Prime Minister, but whatever the reason his intervention is very welcome.

On the subject of devolution Nick Bourne, a Tory peer and Davies’ predecessor as leader in Wales, told the House of Lords that the current Wales Bill will likely be the “last major piece of legislation on Wales for a long time”, whilst Peter Hain made the case for a referendum on tax-raising powers for the Assembly from the red benches.

Another flaring up of Labour devoscepticism occurred in Scotland where the Scotsman reports Brian Wilson, a former Labour cabinet minister, asking what exactly the Scottish Parliament has achieved in the almost 20 years since it was set up and criticising his party for allowing the SNP to recast it as a mere “staging post” for independence.

The paper says that he “has tabled a series of amendments to the Government’s Policing and Crime Bill which would see posthumous pardons for convictions involving what had been many homosexual offences.”

However Jim Allister, a “veteran QC” who leads the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice party, claims that it may in fact be unlawful to offer pardons on the basis of sexual orientation because of the provisions of equality legislation, whilst criticising the apparent hypocrisy of people not campaigning for pardons for heterosexuals convicted of now-obsolete crimes.

Meanwhile the Belfast Telegraph reports that Arlene Foster, the First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has pledged that her party will block attempts to legislate for gay marriage in the province for at least the life of the current Assembly.

The SNP hasn’t introduced a single new piece of legislation to the Scottish Parliament since it won its third term in May’s elections.

According to the Scotsman, new research by the Scottish Conservatives shows how the Nationalists have allowed their fixation on Brexit, and the threat of an independence rematch, to eclipse their domestic agenda. Previous SNP administrations tabled three and then four bills in their first half-year.

It’s not as if the Scottish Government isn’t confronted by problems to fix: in addition to education, which was supposed to be the central focus of Nicola Sturgeon’s new term, the Herald reports that more than three quarters of Scottish universities are forecasting spending deficits for this financial year. The SNP remain committed to exempting Scottish and EU students from tuition fees.

Humza Yousaf, the Nationalist transport minister, capped off the week when he responded to mounting anger at the SNP’s response to over-crowded and late-running commuter trains with admission that he’s not a “transport expert”.

Foster comes out swinging for Brexit

As I mentioned when I discussed the possibility of a Tory-DUP deal, having to own Brexit seems to have injected a new sense of Britishness into Northern Ireland’s dominant, but historically very parochial, unionist party.

This week we had further evidence of that, with the First Minister coming out swinging for the UK in several separate interventions.

In an op-ed for the Guardian, which ran under the headline ‘Britain joined the EU as one nation, and that’s how we’ll leave’, Foster attacked any suggestion that the UK should be dismantled or part-dismantled for the sake of the EU.